Last Shot

by Gregg Hurwitz

  “What else? Dry cleaning? Baby formula?”

  “He’s on solids now.”

  “This wouldn’t have to do with that over-the-wall at TI you’ve been working?”

  “How’d ya guess?”

  “That boy is relentless,” Pete said with admiration, his distinctive half smile detectable in his voice. “Reminds me of you.”

  A sticky thumb pried Tim’s eyelid north, revealing Tyler’s face offset by ninety degrees. Already he’d donned the Evel Knievel helmet. “Kaiyer eat beckfest.”

  It was 6:38 by the alarm clock on Tim’s nightstand. He’d dozed off less than an hour ago; the quality of light in the bedroom had yet to change. “Splendid,” he said.

  He dragged himself from bed, Dray muttering something about sock puppets from a dream stupor. By the time he got Ty dressed, Dray was ready to take over, so Tim ducked into a cool shower to wake himself up. He retrieved his .357 from the gun safe and headed down the hall.

  Tyler sat in his booster, Snowball’s cage at his elbow. When served oatmeal, he demanded that his hamster eat with him, a rigid adherence to some arcane decree of child logic.

  Dray smiled at Tim. “Good morning, sweetie. I’m just cooking you some eggs and bacon.”

  “Really?”

  “No. Are you high?” Dray tossed him a granola bar, then held his face in both hands and planted one on him.

  He glanced past her again. Tyler stood, face sneery with exertion, his legs spread as if to muster strength. The engorged bubble of Snowball’s head peeked from his fist.

  Tim ran over and pried Snowball free. If hamsters could look relieved, Snowball did. Last week Dray had caught Tyler preparing to swing him by his tail. No wonder the little guy ate and slept every chance he got.

  “You can’t do that, bub. We talked about this.”

  “Fowball eyes budge.”

  “Yeah, his eyes bulge. But you’ll hurt him. We’re gonna have to put him somewhere safe now.” Tim inserted Snowball back into his cage and lifted it to the refrigerator top, already crowded with other Typhoon contraband.

  Tyler was bawling, again with the huge tears—the horror, the horror of the confiscated hamster. His chubby legs were doing their Wild Things dance, high knees, downward stomps.

  “If you’re gonna scream, you’re gonna have to scream in your room,” Tim said. “Your animals may want to hear that, but your mother doesn’t. Get going.”

  Tyler rearranged his features in a cartoon pout and thumped out of the kitchen. Tim wondered which sitter had reinforced that expression, because he was sure Tyler wouldn’t get mileage out of Dray on it.

  Tim walked over and gave Dray a quick embrace. He’d just turned for the door when a crash from the kitchen startled him. Bathed in the yellow glow of the open refrigerator, Tyler lay on his back amid a head of lettuce, four flaking onions, and several still-rolling oranges. The preceding scene pieced together immediately; Ty had pried open the fridge door and tried to use the interior shelves as ladder rungs to get to Snowball. It took Tim a moment to realize that his son had only feigned a retreat to his bedroom, really circling the living room couch and sneaking back into the kitchen while his parents had been occupied hugging. Confronted with the blunt nature of Tyler’s deviousness, Tim found himself encountering as much admiration as anger. Though he rarely admitted it, he used to feel the same watching his father work one of his elaborate deceptions. Determination and cunning—the essential qualities of a good con man. Or a deputy U.S. marshal.

  “I got this,” Dray said. “Go stamp out crime.”

  As Dray descended on Tyler, still sheepishly awash in incriminating produce, Tim slipped out and trudged down the walk toward his Explorer, which he’d left at the curb. For once Tad Hartley wasn’t up already, mowing his lawn in the FBI windbreaker he’d worn unfailingly since retirement. An anorexic girl wheezed by on the sidewalk, a skittish Chihuahua in a knit sweater fluttering after her. The annoyances of L.A. hipness had recently started to migrate to Moorpark. Attitude poured in with the rising housing market, which Tim figured for a fair trade. Home to the state’s largest concentration of law enforcement residents, Moorpark would not have been mistaken for Chihuahua-friendly a mere few years ago.

  As Tim chirped the car alarm, a guy in a USC baseball cap stepped around the Explorer, whistling and tossing a football to himself. The football took flight at Tim’s chest, and his hands pulled up, instinctively, to catch it.

  He felt a tug at his waist as his revolver was lifted from his holster, and then the guy’s head tilted back and Walker Jameson stared out from beneath the brim.

  Chapter 57

  Walker flicked Tim’s gun to indicate the front seat, sliding into the back as Tim got behind the wheel. The doors closed, and they were locked behind tinted windows.

  “Drop your phone and portable radio over your back. Now cuff yourself to the steering wheel. Attaboy.” Walker waited, then emptied Tim’s bullets from the cylinder and let the revolver fall over the headrest onto the passenger seat. He settled back, hands out of view in his lap but positioned so Tim knew he was holding a gun. His right T-shirt sleeve was hiked up, revealing what looked like half of a yin-and-yang tattoo.

  He studied Tim’s reflection in the rearview. “You’re softer than I thought you’d be. Married, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Kids?” Walker returned Tim’s nod. “Explains it.” He looked out the window at the house.

  The venetians were mostly closed, but Tim could make out Dray’s figure at the table, serving Tyler breakfast.

  “You got the microcassette before I had a chance to listen to it. I want it back.”

  “You’re in luck. I always carry irreplaceable, crucial evidence in my pocket.” Tim rolled his right hand over, nudging it against his left, trying to get a stray finger beneath the watch to the handcuff key taped there.

  “You do when it’s illegal for you to have it.”

  “You got a point there.” Out of view, Tim’s finger worked against the edge of the hidden key. He sensed anxiety pounding beneath his heartbeat and realized it was due to the proximity of Dray and Tyler. He’d vowed never to let the violence of his work touch his family again. Less than thirty yards away, Dray wiped something off Ty’s face.

  “My wife’s gonna notice the car still sitting here and come check it out. She’s a sheriff’s deputy.” It was all bluff; the tinted windows hid them nicely, and it wasn’t unusual for Tim to sit out in the Explorer before starting the commute, reviewing files out of Tyler’s earsplitting range.

  Walker said, “Retired, isn’t she?”

  “You want to take that up with her Beretta?” Tim drew the key out from its hiding place and buried it in his fist. “We’d better move before she gets suspicious.”

  Walker’s grip closed like a mechanical claw on the back of Tim’s neck, his thumb digging into the pressure point just behind the ear. His voice came right beside Tim’s head. “Open your hand.”

  Tim complied, and Walker reached past him to grab the key. When Walker’s fingertips brushed Tim’s hand, Tim jerked his head free and snapped it back into Walker’s face. A satisfying crunch of bone, and Walker fell away to the cushioned seat. Tim leaned on the horn with his full weight, but it made no sound, and then he heard the gruff tick of Walker’s laugh and felt the gun barrel pressed to his neck.

  A trickle of blood darkened Walker’s upper lip, but it didn’t seem he was going to retaliate. Not yet. Tim opened his fist. Empty. Walker had somehow managed to hold on to the handcuff key.

  “And let me save us another round.” Walker pointed to the dashboard radio. The cord on the push-to-talk mike had been cut. Tim noted the hatched scars on the underside of Walker’s forearm—nicks from combat knife kills. Cutting throats from behind took a surge of adrenaline and a well-honed blade. If the knife penetrated too deep into enemy flesh, it wound up slicing your own arm, the one used to brace the head.

  “I need you to tell me where th
at tape is.”

  “My partner took it last night. Go wrestle him for it.”

  “You know how the game is played.” Walker nodded to the house. “I could go in and have a look.”

  Tim’s heart seemed to hold beatless for a suspended moment. “If you threaten my wife or my boy, I will kill you.” He sat upright, bringing his glare within a foot of the mirror. “Look at me. I will kill you.”

  “You been trying. So far you’re not doing real well.”

  Walker reached for the door. Tim’s rage flared, and he thrashed against the cuffs.

  When he came to, he felt some good pain through the buzz, his head bent forward across the wheel. It took a moment for him to realize that Walker wasn’t pressing the gun to the base of his skull, that the throbbing he felt was the aftereffect of getting pistol-whipped. Walker sat relaxed against the backseat, shuttling the dubbed copy of the microcassette across his knuckles like a casino chip. Tim’s badge and wallet were spilled on the seat beside him. The clock showed 7:05; Tim had been out less than a minute. Dray was gone from the kitchen, probably fighting Tyler into his clothes. That could take a while.

  A band of shadow darkened Walker’s face, but Tim could make out his amused eyes. “Must be something. To feel like that. To have that kind of…” He sucked his teeth and looked away. “Most people fake it. Want to give themselves a sense of purpose. Something to do. Some people, though, like you, it’s the real deal. Tess was that way. My ex, sure, her, too. Same genes, me and Tess, but I’m not built that way. That’s where I have an advantage over you, Rackley: I don’t give a fuck.”

  From what Tim knew of Walker, he rarely spoke, let alone for so long. He wanted to talk. He already had what he’d come for and could’ve just split while Tim was unconscious.

  Straightening himself in his seat, Tim fought through the blur of pain to find a way to keep him engaged. “It’s not about giving a fuck. It’s instinct. How would you react if I threatened your nephew?”

  “I don’t give a shit about him. That’s what people like you can’t get.”

  “How about your ex-wife? She seems like a hell of a woman. If you don’t care about anything, how’d you land her?”

  “Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn now and again.”

  Tim still expected him to bolt with the tape, but he just sat there, studying Tim’s house.

  Walker said, “You got a nice family.” Not a threat. Envy. “You were a killer once. I checked up on your record in the Rangers, too. How do you get from that to this?”

  Tim tried to figure out if Walker saw Tim’s settling into his life as an advance or a degeneration. Probably both. He stared at Tad Hartley’s lawn, wondering why, on this of all mornings, Tad had decided to take a pass on his yard work. No joggers in sight. Living in a cul-de-sac meant no through traffic. “You give up the stuff you think matters the most to you. And you do it before you find out that it never really mattered to you anyway.”

  Walker made a noise, and his chin dipped in faint acknowledgment. “If you get in my way, I’ll kill you. You’re a husband. A father. You really want to put your life on the line for these scumbags?”

  “Not for them.”

  “For what, then?”

  “For me. It’s my job.”

  “To protect rapists and murderers?”

  “My preferences don’t figure in here.”

  “They used to.”

  “I was foolish and self-righteous and pissed off. Like you.”

  Walker’s face was drawn, menace etched in the squint lines. “Man, you haven’t learned a damn thing. People like us get used. There are no rules for the policy makers and the baby kissers. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.” A good-natured smirk. “There didn’t have to be. We brought our own. Depleted-uranium bullets. Gulf War syndrome—and its sequel—ain’t no syndrome. It’s low-level radiation poisoning. I got buddies whose wives can’t sleep with them no more. Stings when they cum. We pack off on a lie and a flag and come back broken, and nobody gives a shit.” He wiped the trickle of blood from his lip. “I was supposed to deploy for six months, wound up in the dirt almost two years. Cost me my marriage. People drift. I sure as hell did. But, hell, I paid the price and I shut up. I even served my time when they put me behind bars for doing the right thing to the wrong person. But meanwhile, back here”—he firmed his mouth, rage overpowering a flicker of something more tender—“back here they can haul your sister into a limo and rape her, then kill her for her troubles. I don’t get it. Maybe you do. You’re a guy like me. How come it worked out so much better for you?”

  Tim could produce no judicious reply, so he kept his mouth shut.

  Walker shifted across the seat toward the door. “Stay the hell out of my way. You might catch a bullet.”

  “I’m gonna keep coming. You know that.”

  “Course. That’s our ROEs.” Walker smiled, genuinely amused. “If there’s one thing you are, Rackley, it’s dependable. I can count on you. Ain’t that right?” He kicked open the door. “You get me in your sights, you’d better shoot straight.”

  He vanished, jogging around the corner to whatever vehicle he’d stowed unassumingly on the middle-class street. Tim hit the disabled horn again, more from habit than anything else, then sat and watched the empty cul-de-sac. His keys were by the gas pedal, and even if he could retrieve them with his foot, he couldn’t get them to his hand. He worked off his left boot, then wedged his heel beside the seat, finally reaching the controls. The driver’s seat whirred back until the tracks came visible. And the tip of an antenna. Hunched forward so the metal wouldn’t grind at his wrists, he fought his sock off using his other boot, leaving red streaks down his shin. He clutched the antenna with his bare toes, retrieving his portable from beneath the seat. Using the ball of his foot, he depressed the call button.

  When the comm center responded, Tim leaned over, talking loudly at the pinned radio. “This is Tim Rackley. Will you call my wife at home and ask her to come outside?”

  Chapter 58

  The front rooms of the Kagan house, mood-lit for a somberness uncharacteristic of the dearly deceased, were scattered with a gathering of soberly dressed people. A few familiar faces, the inner circle able to be summoned at a day’s notice to pay tribute to the dispatched CEO. The curtains were drawn. A spread of fine cheeses on a velvet-draped table. Same caterer, same staff relentlessly clearing and replenishing, different pattern of china. The sparse mourners stood around awkwardly, as if unsure of what they were supposed to do. Dean and Dolan were conspicuously absent, leaving the mourners to fend for themselves or to offer condolences in shifts to Jane Bernard, who circled endlessly like a bride greeting out-of-towners while her daughter, buried in the corner amid a swarm of dark suits, played the part of the grief-stricken fiancée. All signs of yesterday evening’s assault had vanished. No scattered glass, no jagged hole in the window, no blood spatter.

  Tim and Bear had been screened by guards at checkpoints at the gate, the walk, and the door, but once inside they moved unimpeded. During the command-post debriefing, Tim’s headache had dissipated, forgotten, but it returned with a vengeance after he’d had some quiet on the ride over. Bear had returned the file box to an irate Martinez that morning, keeping the second dub that they’d fortunately made the night before. Tim had reached Pete on the drive over, extracting a promise that he’d analyze the security footage from The Ivy within twenty-four hours.

  Received stonily by Jane Bernard, Tim and Bear turned the corner, arriving at Dean’s study, where a team of suited extras toiled, parked on every available chair and counter. The fax machine whirred, cell phones hummed, laptop keyboards clacked. Tim caught the gist from six angles—final preparations for tomorrow’s investor presentation. Never before had he seen so thin a veil between grief and industry. Dolan alone sat still, occupying a club chair, his legs drawn up beside him.

  The activity paused at Tim and Bear’s entrance.

  Bear cleared his throa
t and announced, grandly, “We’ve retrieved a tape of you threatening Tess Jameson.”

  From behind his wooden slab desk, Dean said, “A moment, please, gentlemen.” The think-tank suits assembled their paperwork and shuffled out. Looking wan and nauseated, Dolan remained. The door clicked shut, and Dean’s eyebrows lifted.

  Bear raised Dray’s microcassette player from his breast pocket and punched a button. Dean’s voice issued forth. Dean listened to himself impassively. As the recorded conversation progressed, Dolan shook his head faintly at intervals in what seemed like private self-reprimand.

  The tape ended, and Dean said, “I do not need to remind you that it’s illegal to record someone without their consent in the state of California.”

  “Speaking of illegal,” Tim said, “it seems like you had a pretty strong motive to keep an eye on Tess.”

  “She was one of a thousand problems we deal with on a daily basis. Nothing more.”

  “I don’t know. A high-profile rape trial, lurid stories of a pregnancy, a lawsuit threatening.”

  “Not ‘threatening.’ We’d reached an agreement.”

  “Oh? Then why’d you pull Sam from the Xedral trial?”

  “I’m afraid you’re mistaken there, Deputy.” Dean shoved back from his desk, the chair casters squeaking on the floor. “She elected to drop her son from the study, not vice versa.”

  Dolan emerged from his groggy state, his attention pulling to his father.

  “Sure,” Bear said. “She’s gonna remove her son from the one clinical trial that might save his life?”

  “Odd, I know,” Dean said. “We questioned it ourselves. But I think we can dispense with the notion that all Ms. Jameson’s actions were rational. I have it here in her hand.” Without lowering his gaze, he slid open his top desk drawer, removed two sheets of paper, and extended them to Tim.

  Dolan pushed down on the chair’s arms, almost rising to his feet.

  Bear laughed once, in disbelief. Confounded, Tim stepped forward and took the papers. At once he recognized the lavender-tinted stationery and Tess’s distinctive handwriting. The second paper was a faxed version of the same letter.